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Marketing is all about story telling – Stories stir emotions in us, create connections, and motivate us to act. In real estate marketing, we must learn to listen to our clients, hear them, understand them, and push THEIR story out into the market place. We are telling their story, not ours. The practice of using “beautiful design to evoke emotion” is what helped launch Raj Qsar and The Boutique Real Estate Group into a massive success. Raj felt so strongly about the need for unique design work in his company that his first hire was a graphic designer. Today, Raj is expanding his company, developing his high end branding, continuing his extensive and wildly famous listing videos, and traveling the world speaking for Inman. Tune into this special episode to learn how important it is to market with intent, and to not only listen to what others are doing, but WATCH what they are doing.

Offering a wide variety of exhibits, foods, entertainment, rides and hands-on activities. There is something for everybody at the Fair including the summer headline concert series, working farm and petting zoos, thrill rides, contests, and games.

The show features the original artwork by 140 award-winning artists from Orange County. Art-related attractions and special events include jazz concerts, wine and chocolate pairings, and guided and audio art tours throughout the eight-week run.

Audiences are amazed and enchanted by 90 minutes of tableaux vivants (“living pictures”), incredibly faithful re-creations of classical and contemporary works of art, with real people posing to look exactly like their counterparts in the original pieces.

Sundays. Be sure to bring a blanket or low-back beach chair. A Spirit Garden will be available to purchase alcoholic drinks with the proceeds benefiting the 5th Marine Regiment Support Group. BBQ food items will be for available for purchase and the proceeds will benefit the Dana Point Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9934.

Food, Rides, Games, Music and fun for the whole family. Enjoy hot buttery Corn on the Cob, great sandwiches, sweet warm Funnel Cakes and other tasty treats. Be sure to visit the new Corn Festival Marketplace. Parade on Saturday at 9:30am.

Presented by The Johnny O Foundation and Old World Village. Raffles for “Cool” prizes. The event is open to all makes and models of cars and trucks! Market consists of a Farmers Market, food and drink, collectibles plus arts and crafts from displayed by vendors from all over. Free parking and free admission.

Heritage Museum will offer two days of learning from both the Confederate and Union soldiers as they reenact daily routines during the civil war. See large and small Civil War weapons and artillery, experience canon fire demonstrations and visit their blacksmith shop for interactive activities.

Maine lobster is flown in fresh on the morning of the event. Live entertainment on from our stage located on the beach. A percentage of the proceeds go to Leadership Tomorrow and Make-A-Wish® Orange County and the Inland Empire.

Food and game booths sponsored by local nonprofit organizations, three stages with continuous live music, contests for all ages, a Salsa Challenge, arts & crafts show, kiddie area, exhibits, face painters and much more.

Talented live bands, outdoor dancing, a gallery exhibit and artist demonstrations, along with theatre performances. Over 35 area restaurants will provide food and beverage samples with taste tickets being sold for only $3 each.

This fun event showcases the center’s vast amenities and gives couples and families the chance to tour the property, meet vendors, sample delectable appetizers and entrees, toast with drinks and play wedding games.

Grab your swimsuit, floatie and family, and come on down to the pool for a movie. Swim and float in the pool while Secret Life of Pets plays on the big screen. Lifeguards will be on duty. Recreation swim fee is $2 per child and $4 per adult.

Themed “Always on Our Minds,” the event brings together Elvis fans and tribute artists who emulate the King of Rock and Roll. Activities include the King of Cadillac Car Show, a new Hound Dog Motorcycle Ride and Show presented by Lifestyle Cycles, food trucks, and more!

If you’ve had your website up and running for more than a few months, you’ve probably noticed something curious. You’re getting some traffic, but almost none of that traffic converts into actual leads…

What gives?

Well, to some extent this is the nature of online marketing; only a small fraction of the people who visit your site will convert. C’est la vie right?

Wrong. In 2018 there is an entire industry dedicated to using design and functionality to increase the number of conversions on your site. It’s called Conversion Rate Optimization. Or CRO for short. CRO uses data and analytics to determine design, copy, and layout changes.

1. Leverage Hick’s Law to Encourage Your Visitors to Engage

Named for British Psychologist William Edmund Hick, this law states that the more choices a consumer has, the longer it will take them to make a decision.

In a study on decision making in supermarkets, Hick set up two sample displays of jam. One had 24 flavors, and the other had only six flavors of jam.

The results showed that 60% of people stopped and sampled jam from the table with 24 flavors. However, only 6% ended up purchasing a jar of jam.

Meanwhile, only 40% of people stopped to sample jam from the table with six flavors, but an astonishing 30% ended up purchasing jam.

Applying Hick’s Law to Your Site Design

Image via Hotjar

The takeaway here should be obvious. By narrowing the number of choices your visitors have, you can dramatically increase your conversion rate.

In order to do this effectively, you need to take the time to figure out exactly what it is you want your visitors to do on each page of your site. For a landing page this might be obvious. You want them to fill out a form and give you their contact info.

For other pages on your site, the answer might not be so obvious. For example, what is the main thing you want visitors to do on your homepage? Do you want them to read the latest from your blog? Check out your brand new listings? Schedule a listing appointment?

In order to get you thinking about this, it makes sense to check out the sites of some top producing Realtors for inspiration. To get you started, here is the main page for Los Angeles luxury brokers Williams & Williams:

Okay, I know. This is an extreme example from a team that has dozens of jaw dropping eight figure listings in Beverly Hills… Of course they’re going to encourage people to look at their listings first!

Let’s look at a site on the opposite end of the spectrum that still uses Hick’s Law. Check out the homepage for Placester’s free NAR websites:

The main choices here seem to be home search, and testimonials. Since these sites are all about generating buyer leads, this makes perfect sense.

For landing pages or home value sites, Hick’s Law is even clearer. In most cases you don’t even have the option to do anything besides enter your address and contact info.

2. Use Heatmaps to Find Out What Your Visitors Really Want

One of the trickiest things to do when designing your website or landing page is figuring out where your visitors are looking for information. Even if your layout and navigation seems obvious to you, it may not be obvious to all your visitors.

Luckily, there is a clever solution to this problem. Using heatmap software, you can track exactly where your site visitors are clicking and navigating. Here’s how it works:

Sign up for a service like Crazy Egg or Hotjar and add pages from your site that you want to track. After a month or so, the software will create a heatmap showing an average of where all users navigated and clicked.

How Heatmap Software works: Heatmaps

Areas where users click or navigate to often are represented in red, while areas they click or navigate less are in yellow, green, and finally blue.

Using this data, you can tweak your layout, copy, and site colors to both improve efficient navigation, and subtly encourage your visitors to take a specific action. Depending on what you’ve decided that action is, this can mean signing up for an email list, entering their address, or browsing properties.

Here are a few common mistakes that heatmap software might uncover, and how you can fix them:

Problem
Your visitors are clicking on images or text that are not linked to anything

Solution
Consider moving your navigation, or CTA to the area they are clicking, or link the images or text in that area to a landing page or other relevant page on your site.

Image via Hotjar

Problem
Visitors are navigating and clicking on too many areas of your page and ignoring what you want them to focus on

Solution
Keep Hick’s Law in mind and simplify your page’s layout to encourage them to click where you want them to

Image via Hotjar

How Heatmap Software Works: Scroll Depth

Another useful metric that heatmap software can measure for you is scroll depth. This is the average “depth” a visitor scrolls down your page.

The same color codes used with heatmaps are used for scroll depth. Red areas are where the majority of users scroll down to. Going from red to orange, to yellow, and finally to blue where almost no visitor scrolls to.

Here’s what a scroll depth chart looks like using Hotjar:

As you can see, the percentage of site visitors who scroll down past “the fold” (the area of your website that is visible without scrolling) goes down dramatically toward the bottom of your site.

Scroll depth heatmaps can be a sobering wake up call for just how much of your website is never seen by your visitors. For example, on many pages, less than 10%(!!) of site visitors scroll down to the bottom of the page.

How to Use Scroll Depth data to Increase Conversions

The most common use for scroll depth data is for your blog posts. For example, if you have a post that’s more than say, 1,000 words, and less than 10% of your audience is getting to the end of the article, you need to make tweaks to get more people to finish the article.

Since longer articles do far better in search results than shorter articles, cutting down the length of your blog posts is not an ideal solution. Instead, break up the content of the article with images, graphs, and subheadings so people can skim the article.

People are busy and attention spans short. Letting your visitors skim an article and only read the subheading relevant to them will increase conversions.

3. Learn the “F” Pattern: Take Advantage of How People Scan Web Pages

According to eye tracking research by Nielsen Norman Group, people scan web pages and phone screens in an ‘F” pattern; they start at the top left then scan right, then down, then to the right again, then to the bottom of the article.

It ends up looking something like this on a heatmap:

Image via Instapage

While the “F” pattern is not the only way people scan article or webpages, it is the most common.

Here’s what a real estate homepage that utilizes the “F” pattern in its layout:

Screenshot: thebotiquere.com

Here’s another:

Screenshot: pearsonsmithrealty.com

…and another:

Image via: labs.hawaiilife.com

Here’s how you can take advantage of the “F” pattern on a blog post. Note where they’re placing the “Watch Live” button.

Screenshot via: inman.com

4. Make Sure Buttons and Text Boxes Are Easy to Use on Mobile

Is your website mobile friendly? If it’s not, there is a 100% chance you’re losing potential leads. According NAR’s 2017 Real Estate in a Digital Age Report 72% of home buyers used a mobile or tablet website or app in their home search. That’s a lot of lost leads…

Besides making sure the WordPress theme you’re using is responsive (aka works well on desktop and mobile) you need to pay special attention to buttons and text boxes.

In 2017, that means making your text boxes and buttons large enough even for people who are all thumbs to press. If you don’t, your leads may spend a few seconds trying in vain to get in touch with you then just give up.

Here are some of the buttons and text boxes you should pay special attention to on mobile:

Believe it or not, even the buttons you use on your CTA’s can have a huge impact on your conversion rate. Subtle changes in color, shape, and copy on your buttons can mean more leads and more closed deals.

The only problem is that the digital marketing community just can’t seem to agree on what changes exactly lead to increased conversions. That said, there are still a few rules that most marketing and CRO experts can agree on:

Orange, green, and blue buttons seem to convert the highest

Buttons whose color contrasts well with the background color convert well

They are actual buttons, not just text links!

They use specific action words in their copy- “Get My Home Value” or “Download My Free PDF” will work better than “submit” or the dreaded “click here”

They’re in a strategic place on the page- Think headline, short copy, text box, button. Also keep the “F” pattern in mind, as well as data from your heatmaps.

Here are some CTA button examples from Unbounce and Instapage that follow these principles well.

Okay, now that you’ve got some new CRO inspired design ideas for your website, the next step is to test them on you site. After all, there is no secret formula for conversion. Some changes or combinations of changes may work better or worse depending on a huge number of variables.

In order to find out which changes lead to better conversion rates, you need to use what the industry calls A/B testing (also known as Split Testing). Here’s how it works.

Whenever you make an edit to your layout, buttons, CTA’s or any copy, record your conversion rate and compare it to your previous conversion rate. In order to get a more accurate measurement, it helps to switch back and forth between changes more than once.

Once You’ve identified a change that leads to a higher conversion rate, then keep it and make another small change to the site and runt the same A/B testing. After a few iterations of this, your site should be fully optimized for conversion.

A/B Testing Landing Pages

The best thing about A/B testing with landing page software is that they serve up different versions of your landing page to different users. This is important to rule out factors like the day of the week or season that might affect conversion rates.

A/B Testing Other Pages on Your Website

If you’re not using landing page software like Unbounce, A/B testing your website is a little trickier. If you’re using WordPress, you can simply run one version of your page, record your conversion rate, then run the second version and compare the two.

Crazy Egg also offers an A/B testing platform, but you’ll have to shell out for their software to use it. With plans starting at $29 per month, it probably won’t break the bank, but manual A/B testing using WordPress edits is free. You just have to be careful about the time periods you test.

7. Use Live Chat Buttons for Visitors Who Want Instant Answers

There’s a funny paradox when it comes to lead generation. Some leads want to talk to you right away, but they don’t want to call you, and they don’t want to email… Short of sending a smoke signal, what else is there?

Enter the live chat button. Live chat buttons are small buttons that sit in the corner of your website and beckon your visitors to have their questions answered instantly. Of course some visitors will just waste your time, but some won’t…

While there are a lot of options on the market, the best live chat software will ping your phone and allow you to respond to live chat via text message. This way you can answer questions and ideally get them to call you while you’re on the go.

Real Estate Live Chat Options for 2018

Luckily, if you’re considering adding live chat to your website there are a ton of options on the market. Zendesk, LiveChat, Pure Chat, and Ready Chat are all solid options.

AI Chat Bots

Amazingly, some companies even offer programmable AI chat bots to interact with your site visitors and answer basic questions. Personally, I would avoid these solutions for now, as many of your visitors will be offended that you pawned them off on a robot…

The Bottom Line

If there’s one thing you do to your website in 2018, using CRO strategies to optimize for better lead conversion should be it. Pay attention to Hick’s Law, use heatmap software to track visitors, make sure buttons are easy to use on mobile, design them well, use live chat, and remember to A/B test your changes.

“Raj Qsar at Inman NYC // It’s time for Inman—it’s Inman time! In this episode, Raj Qsar is a blinding, brilliant light from heaven. He brings all of his energy and passion for video in real estate and just CRUSHES it. You’ll be inspired—just like we were—when you hear Raj talk about how he broke into the luxury market using video; the ROI of video in his business; and how much he can bench press. For real. He can bench press a lot.” -The Boom Real Estate Podcast Episode #34.

The home at 22570 Hidden Hills Road in Yorba Linda sold on Nov. 1 for $6.1 million, coming in under its $7.5 million list price in May. The sale represented the highest ever in the city. Nestled onto a private, 3.1-acre ridgetop lot, the estate features views that stretch to the ocean on the horizon. The 8,320-square-foot, contemporary-style home, formerly owned by the executive chef of Yardhouse Restaurants, Carlito Jocson, includes a restaurant caliber kitchen with Viking appliances, a large Subzero refrigerator and an adjacent 1,200- bottle, temperature-controlled wine storage room. Outdoors, there’s another full-service kitchen featuring an ample bar-seating area and wood-fired pizza oven. There are five bedrooms and six baths, as well as a 13-person theater and a billiards room, and a whole-home Crestron system. The grounds include a basketball court, full outdoor bath, and space for a helipad. The home was designed by DKY Architects’ David Streshinsky. Raj Qsar and Christina Boladian of The Boutique Real Estate Group represented the seller, and Edward Englehart of First Team Real Estate worked on behalf of the buyer.

Congratulations to the top 10 agents and the five honorable mentions in home tours and listing videos! This was an extremely difficult category to judge with so many quality entries. While we saw many highly produced samples, we focused on the story that each video told and how well they were able to explain the amenities and characteristics of each home.

We took into consideration the human element first. If a video did not have the real estate agent, homeowner, or even actors to help bring the home to life, they were eliminated from the competition. Needless to say, slideshows need not apply.

What we ultimately came up with was a balanced list of videos that includes both highly produced videos and videos every agent can create. Check out the top agents in the Listing Video category and get inspired by their creations!

Who can tell the story of a home and why it’s so magical better than the person who specifically built the home, custom to his family’s wants and needs? We love this video because we can see and feel why this home is so important to the homeowner.

#1 Raj Qsar // Home Tour Video Award

Raj is no stranger to awards. In 2017, Raj was named The Real Estate Influencer of The Year by Inman News. In 2016, Raj was named to the prestigious Swanepoel Power 200 Honoring the Most Powerful 200 People in Residential Real Estate. On his YouTube channel, you can find a variety of interviews with him where he discusses how important it is for real estate agents to utilize video in their business. Raj truly captures the luxury and cinematic essence of his high-end listings, on top of leveraging unique storytelling within his highly produced listing videos.

💥 My team is excited to announce we are expanding. We are looking for a motivated 🏡 Realtor who wants to join my personal real estate team. Needs to have a RE License, work weekdays/nights & weekends, love technology, have a very flexible schedule and is super outgoing. We will train you on everything. If you know anyone who is looking to start a career in real estate or if they are in real estate but not doing what they feel like they can do please have them apply here 👉www.JoinTheBoutique.com and to learn more about our company please visit 👉www.TheBoutiqueRE.com☺️

I’m speaking at the #NurtureCon Online Conference- let’s hang out! This online conference starts October 23rd and runs through Friday October 27th. ‘ll be speaking on How to Make Real Estate Movies that Sell Houses. The event is definitely targeting real estate agents and brokers who want to up their game at lead nurturing, lead generating, branding, video and content, but it also extends to those working in any professional real estate capacity / admin, realtor spouses, team leads and real estate trainers.

The real estate industry is changing. Hand-written offers, filing cabinets and printers are a thing of the past. Mobile offices, instantaneous responses, and data analytics are here to stay. For a brokerage to survive in this new digital age, their agents need to be equipped with state of the art tools at their fingertips.

Now that the days of drowning in paper are over, it seems like a new real estate technology pops up every day and it can be easy to get overwhelmed and lost in all the options. So how do you differentiate the useful from the useless and figure out which tools are right for you and your brokerage?

I spent a lot of time thinking about this very question for my team at The Boutique Real Estate Group. I started this brokerage with the primary objective of providing a world class experience for our clients. I have known from day one that in order to deliver on this goal my agents would need the right tech tools to do high quality work and provide a seamless experience to their clients.

I invest in technology that will improve the agent experience and the customer experience. I have developed these 5 “rules” for picking the right technology to develop a tech-centric brokerage:

1. Set a vision for your brokerage

Spend the time to brainstorm and define what kind of brokerage you want to be. What is important to you? What does your brokerage stand for? And how will technology help you achieve this? Clearly define it. Write it down. Memorize it. Now every time you look at a potential tool ask yourself if it fits into your tech framework and if not – pass!

2. Culture is everything

You’ve defined your vision, but how do you bring it to life? The answer is – culture. Don’t underestimate the power of culture to get everyone in your office to achieve your vision. It is up to you and your leadership team to develop a culture that embraces technology and values change.

3. Mobile first

Any technology that you consider for your brokerage MUST be mobile and tablet friendly. Agents, brokers and the modern customer need location independence – the freedom to work and sign on the fly. In the high speed world we live in nothing kills a deal like time.

4. Integrating gives you magic powers

The real secret to the getting the most out of your technology investment is integrations. When data is seamlessly shared from platform to platform, your agents or transactions coordinators don’t need to waste time on tedious data entry. This can improve accuracy and allow your agents to focus on their clients.

5. Pick a partner

In the end, when you select the technology provider – you are selecting a partner that will be with you for a long time. Make sure to pick a company that shares your values, that will answer the phone when you call and that is working to build the same future for real estate that you are. Don’t necessarily pick a company just for your needs today, but for your needs in 5, 10, 15 years…

With these rules in mind, I have built a tech-enhanced brokerage that is leading the way into real estate’s digital future and is fully armed to deliver high quality service. Now that I’ve shared my secrets, please add your own in the comments section below.

Congratulations! You’ve already taken the first step to properly preparing your brokerage for success in the digital age. Next up: navigating the hundreds of options out there – good luck!

Raj Qsar, Principal and Owner of The Boutique Real Estate Group, was named The Real Estate Influencer of the Year 2017 by Inman News. He has cracked the code for creating a tech-enhanced brokerage and The Boutique was named Most Innovative Brokerage. Find out more about what the Boutique Real Estate Group is doing by connecting with Raj on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.